Sam Chaiton is a Toronto author and playwright, a dancer and long-time social justice advocate. His first book, co-authored with Terry Swinton, was the international non-fiction bestseller Lazarus and the Hurricane, which became a basis for the Norman Jewison film The Hurricane starring Denzel Washington. In the movie, Liev Schreiber portrays Sam, one of “the Canadians” who helped unjustly imprisoned Rubin Carter regain his freedom.

Sam has also written two plays. His next book We Used to Dream of Freedom is a memoir to be published by Dundurn in 2024, about being a child of Holocaust survivors, whose untold secrets profoundly affected the course of his life.

He lives with his partner in Toronto, where they are ardent supporters of the performing and visual arts, equity and access issues, and Innocence Canada (formerly the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted) that Sam had helped found.